Cliff McIntosh

Even though there still may be more posts to come on this thread, let me say thank you now to people for sharing their knowledge, their opinions, their experiences, and their links to sound files. I appreciate your taking the time to post. Cliff

I'm an amateur fiddle player who is interested in exploring the concertina to play in American "old-time" music. As points of reference, think "8th of January," "Mississippi Sawyer," "Soldier's Joy," "Old Joe Clark," "Cumberland Gap," and those sorts of things -- things that might get played at a square dance. Given the type of music I am interested in playing, I have a couple of questions about choice of instrument. (1) Is there a particular sort of concertina that works better for this sort of music? By this I mean to ask whether an Anglo or English or duet works better with this sort of music. Does it matter? If you know of folks who do this sort of music on a concertina and know what type of concertina they use, I'd love to hear what you know. If I were to use an Anglo concertina, and most of the tunes I play are in D, A and G, am I better off getting an instrument in D/G rather than the more common C/G tuning? What do I need to think about when making a choice? Thanks, Cliff